


machtpolitik

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Real World, M/M, Pseudo-Incest, Serial Killers, Torture, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 00:12:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1837261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi recalls his lifestory from the execution chamber.</p>
            </blockquote>





	machtpolitik

**  
**

**eros I.**

_Salvation._

Eren was his first salvation.

And his very last.

Passed down through the system like garbage; his boyhood was the sort of thing that Christians liked to cry about in church, jizzing themselves over the communion basket because _Jesus loved the fucking children, all the fucking children of the world._ Ever since the suicide of his parents - which, despite all the media coverage, nobody really understood - he'd been tossed from one pair of arms to the other, onwards and upwards until the day he finally ran.

"Little vehicle," they called him, when they had to speak to him at all. It was the cult law; Heaven's Gate didn't allow for the earthly kind of pleasures that he'd been born from. He was the shame of her womb, their lamp-oil sin - so they slept through his nightmares, and ignored the monsters under his bed, and left his scrapes to fester without a kiss.

He grew up like a weed, too strong to crush but too dangerous to let lie. Too unholy, too sloe-eyed and wild.

They hated him.

They were terrified of him.

And, finally, they found a way to escape him. March of 1997. Phenobarbital and hard liquor. Cyanide and arsenic, along with a couple prayers to the Lord. The whole lot of fuckers called themselves the "Heaven's Gate Away Team," and he guessed from what the newspapers said that they were trying to get to some sort of afterlife, somehow. Something to do with UFOs, maybe. He never really knew, and he never bothered to care.

He was nine years old. They found the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Ackerman a week after they'd disappeared, "leaving their poor baby boy behind."

Sometimes, though, he couldn't help but wonder just _how_ they died. He'd close his eyes and try to envision their vivisected bodies, cold, stiff, stretched out and toe-curled on the pathologist's gurney. How did the doctors figure out what drugs they'd swallowed, what had killed them first? Did they go digging around in thirty-eight pairs of slimy, grey-green stomachs to find all the answers they needed? Were dead faces as peaceful as their gravestones claimed?

The questions were like an itch he couldn't scratch. Wouldn't, didn't, for a very, _very_ long time.

It was all drugs and souldeath from then on out. Boys, knives, slitting open stray cats and licking the blood off the spool of their small intestines. Trying to cauterize his desire. It wasn't until later that he found out how _normal_ this was, how _nicely_ his behavior fit into the psychological box of disorders. It was only curiosity. Bundy had porn. Dahmer, homosexuality. Nightstalker worshiped the devil. It all came down to something. Or an amalgam of things. As long as the reporters could rack up the blame, it was all right.

For Levi, it came down to Eren Jaeger.

The Jaegers were his foster parents for two whole fucking years - which was pretty damn impressive, they claimed, for a non-medical kid. All things considered, they were the best parents he'd ever had. They tried their damndest to heal him. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done - but he commended their efforts long after Eren was gone.

But, _god,_ the boy had been beautiful. Just five years younger than Levi; a modest ten to his fifteen. He was musky and brown-skinned, always fighting, always shouting. He liked to tousle, to wrestle, forever knotting kinks into his gorgeous dark hair.

Levi used to crawl out of bed at night, crouch down by Eren's headboard and run his fingers through the lush, matted strands while the boy was asleep. Snoring softly, completely oblivious to the tender caresses on his skin. He smelled like rain-soaked earth, and the heady, copper scent of schoolboy war that always followed him home. 

Somehow, he kind of... _fell_ for Eren. Quite literally, because being around the boy would make his heart drop to his stomach and his head swim and his chest flutter, and the things Eren would do to him; _oh,_ the hugs and sweet kisses and idiotic younger-brother possessiveness - all made him burn with desire. Sometimes, Levi almost got the feeling that Eren loved him, too. Sometimes. But it was hard to tell, because feelings never seemed to linger too long in that precious, thick skull of his.

But the kid had a sister. And his sister _hated_ Levi. Dark-haired and blue-eyed like him, ridiculously strong for a girl of thirteen. Silent and slightly eerie, highly protective of the brother she loved; they were far too much alike to possibly get along. They generally tried to avoid each other, but there was more than enough breakfast bickering and hallway disputing to make Mr. and Mrs. Jaeger clutch their temples in exasperation.

Fucking _hell_ , did he hate Mikasa. For the sake of his immortal soul, he hoped that she never found out about what he did to Eren.

But, besides that - besides a few minor hangups - they were high, and life was beautiful.

For a while.

Then Levi decided to do that thing adults call _being proactive._

Things fell into place. Puzzle pieces formed in his mind. Eren was a touchy-feely kid, especially intimate with his older brother. His parents didn't mind - in fact, they viewed it as one of his childish strengths. Like, an aspect of his personality still untainted by the cruel, corruptive world around him. An oasis of humanity.

So, yeah, they kissed. They kissed a lot. Even before things got violent, Eren had liked to kiss him.

And so - day after day, night after night, they did their dance; together they weaved a tapestry of ardor, of which Eren could only see stitch-by-stich, progressing with a single needle in his hand. Meanwhile, Levi assumed the role of cold, deistic puppeteer; stood back and watched, and crawled towards liberation, as Eren threaded himself into a snarl of devastating, stultifying lust.

 _Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,_ _exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied._

_Look at this tangle of thorns_.

He went slow with everything. First, he showed Eren his "taxidermy" collection. It scared him. His eyes went wide when he first registered what he was seeing, so fucking _wide,_ and his chest made little, quick palpitations of fright that Levi could just barely see under the fabric of his shirt. His spine curved. His fists clenched. It was a split-second of change in his soul, beautifully tangible and visible, a spiritual flinching manifested in the way his face contorted so terribly. Like some special space of trust in his heart, reserved just for Levi, had been physically trampled on and destroyed in that very moment of understanding.

That was when Levi first realized the depth of passion, of potency inhuman emotions. Especially in Eren's _fear_. He'd been expecting some small jolt of sadistic pleasure out of the whole thing, sure, but nothing in the world could've made him guess how fantastically _arousing_ it would be.

Fuck, it made him hard.

Eren still kissed him after that, sometimes, but not nearly as much and not nearly as freely. It was more of a thing where Levi would pull him off to the side for a minute as whenever he passed by in the hall, maybe into a dark closet or bathroom, pin him to the wall with his hips. Being the smart kid he was, Eren would take it as a cue to lower his defenses, open his lips and let Levi tonguefuck him until he got tired of it.

Sometimes, Eren liked to scare him. "Mikasa knows," he'd whisper, as Levi straddled him beneath the sheets during those long, dark nights. "She'll fucking kill you."

The threats were empty, though. Mikasa continued to avoid him, just like he avoided her.

It escalated slowly, more because Levi was biding his time than because he really wanted to go easy on Eren. By the time he was eleven-and-a-half, the kid was a fucking pro - he could deepthroat like a pornstar, and he took the comeshots like a queen. It was always so precious to help him into the shower afterwards and wipe off his face, because he managed to look so regal and removed throughout the whole thing - with a teenage girl eyeroll and a melodramatic sigh whenever Levi busted out the shampoo because there was a knot right _there_ \- a tiny one, Eren, but I gotta fucking _clean it_ \- of jizz, matted into his soft, brown hair.

Eren only ever vomited once. After that, Levi was careful as hell not to jerk his head around too much or too quickly, because the cleanup from that one was absolutely disgusting. Come and puke, all over floor and dick and everything. And a little bit of blood, too. But no tears. Just a temporal cold-shoulder and some angry feelings.

The day he finally took Eren's all was terrible and wonderful and memorable and mind-shattering; heaven and hell and everything in between. It wasn't at home, though for some fucking goddamn stupid reason he can't remember where exactly it happened. Probably at the playground or something, with lots of rough pavement. Maybe on the bathroom floor. Bathrooms were a distinct part of it, he knew that for sure, because Eren spent ages in one afterwards - sick, collecting himself, puking and bleeding through a veil of memory.

He remembered how it went down, though. It was just a simple bend and snap, and by the time Eren's wrist was fractured he was already so hard he couldn't think straight. Eren cried a little bit, but only a little. He sure made a lot of weird noises, though, and flopped around something awful. At one point Levi had to grab him by the shoulders to keep him from sliding right off his dick. His body went ragdoll-limp, boneless on the pavement, and Levi could almost _feel_ his soul breaking apart with each subsequent thrust. A lyrical beat of _crack, crack_ and hissing groans that must've either been hell creaking open, Satan rising up to claim Levi as his own or the sound of Eren's kneecaps grinding to bits on the rough concrete. Maybe even both at once.

It was the strongest fucking lust he'd ever known, and had yet to know - he came once, buckets and buckets of it; came twice when the first orgasm wasn't enough. There was sweat in his eyes, and at one point he might've flipped Eren over and fucked him from the top, licked the dirt and sex and wet, beaded blood off his face. When Levi propped him up to remove his shirt, there were scourge-marks lining his lower back, gravel in his scrapes and tiny pebbles buried in the torn skin-flaps of his palms. He might've licked those, too, pressed his nails into the gashes just to elicit some sort of dull spasm from his stupid blank face, because he wasn't _crying,_ damn him. He wouldn't cry. Levi tore him up inside and out, but after the initial break, there was nothing left within him. No human light. No real response.

What happened afterwards is still kind of blurry, though Eren-in-the-bathroom is clear as day in his mind. Time had kind of melted away when it realized that it wasn't welcome in Levi's little world of bliss. There might've been some harsh words; Eren in his arms, unable to walk, blood on his face and in his teeth. Wrist flopping at his side, useless. But he wasn't sure when or why or how long he had to carry the limp boy.

Hours. Days. Weeks. It all merged together after he pulled out of Eren and re-dressed him, cleaned his wounds and dried all the soggy parts off. After that, Levi delivered him to the front porch of the Jaegers' house. He set Eren down to shiver on the step, bruised and stained and sticky with the proof of his love. He wanted them to know what had happened. He wanted them to find a good psychiatrist for their son, give him lots of meds and shit so he'd be all right again.

Thus, he said his goodbyes, and lifted up a silent prayer for the both of them. He climbed through their bedroom window, gathered his perpetual belongings, and left.

He could've sworn that he heard Eren crying out for Mikasa as he ran, hurrying into the sunset, but the kid didn't have much of a voice left to call with.

Maybe it had just been his imagination.

 

**eros II.**

It wasn't until he was free that his life truly began.

He was homeless, working some shitty fast-food job from 9 to fucking 5 and sometimes even past that. Minimum wage. He got his kicks on Route 666, following the beautiful city boys home. Meticulously, he'd find them and stalk them for weeks, like any dedicated killer would do; fall in love with them from afar, with the long gait of their walk and the way they'd look crying like Eren never did.

Old, long-cemented connections kept him supplied. In that way, he supposed, he was blessed. Xanax and a beer, a couple of of those heaven-sent odone's and ine's - he mixed and toyed, toyed and mixed. Dump the bodies all over the world, and the world is in your hands. Roll the blunt, lace it with poison. Keep your fridge stockpiled with the stuff you're gonna stick up their ass. Don't do too much of it yourself; shit's addictive. If your equipment stays sterile, you can keep them alive for days. Death from infection is a fucking boner-killer.

They all had green eyes.

He spent most of his freetime back then by following, driving, taking cabs and trains. He used the Internet to find out how much human bodies were like cats'. He ordered the surgical instruments online, nearly pissed himself waiting because it was so ridiculously simplistic and easy. When he finally got his white-gloved hands around that first lovely neck, though, he wasn't as gentle as he should've been. He used too many pills and sliced too sloppy. There was a lot more skin than he imagined, especially on someone that slender.

He'd driven the boy into the middle of a forest full of big-ass trees, after buying him a couple of sufficiently-drugged drinks at some sleazy restaurant. It took a lot of lying through his teeth, way more talking than he'd done in ages. Eventually, though, the kid was laughing at every little speed bump in the road and cracked out on candy-colored medicine; alcohol, some hard drugs Levi could barely even name.

He wound rope around Babyface (endearing, right?), who immediately stopped smiling and begun resisting as frantically as his loose limbs would allow. Unfortunately, Levi had twice the strength and thrice the coordination; he won the fight without lifting so much as a finger.

He'd heard the head was supposed to be propped up or something, so he dragged pillow after pillow out of his car and made a soft deathbed under the boy. He fashioned little nooses with the weave and slipped nails through the loops; proceeded to bolt the nails into the ground like a tent of reinforced rope. A star over his chest and an oval running from scalp to heel that he'd made to purposefully resemble a pentagram, because - well, why the fuck not? Serial killers were supposed to be  _creative._

He tied a tourniquet around the boy's arm, to test how well the circulation cut-off would work. He started out by slicing gently - the blood beading at the tip of his wound was mesmerizing, oddly inspiring. This was the world beneath his parents that he had never known. That kid back in fourth grade whose skin Levi used to snip at with scissors, like it wasn't any different from all the other bullying he had to endure - except, years later, thinking about it still made him hot to the core.

The boy made a light sound of protest, so dulled down by the drugs that Levi couldn't help but touch him. It was so gently pathetic, so tender and fruitless. He made another cut; more moans as his reward. Then, he delivered a soft kiss - the way those eyes stared at him through a dawning haze of pain, so green, so innocently aware - filled him with some sort of wet, warm, affectionate joy.

This first time, he decided, would be more about the immediate gratification than the lasting sensation. He could draw it out in the future, but the present was the present.

_Live in the now, Levi.  
_

The struggling picked up halfway through his attempt to scalpel Babyface's abdominal grooves. So, with some sort of reluctant sound, he rose to his feet, seizing the boy's flailing left arm between his two fists, looked away and - _crack!_ A sound as beautiful, exquisite as Eren's shattered wrist had been went snapping like a whip through the air. Finally the waterworks came, the screaming began - but his noises were hardly a decibel above a whisper, more akin to a dying rabbit than a pretty boy. Levi slammed a booted foot down his throat to prevent further audibility. Babyface gasped and began to froth; blood pooled in rivulets at the edges of his mouth, like two dynamic Black-Dahlia slashes. Teeth meet steel, disintegrating - followed by some gagging noises, and a tongue trying to force its way through his lips.

"If you scream, I'll have to rip that out for you," Levi said, with a motherly sigh.

A weak spasm, a few chokes. Levi switched feet and shoved his left boot inside, gripping the boy's right forearm around wrist and elbow - then, the sound of porcelain breaking, a gargling, muffled cry. Lyrical onomatopoeia. More red-tinged spit and fluid. Levi leaned down to clean it off his face.

Once the limbs were all broken and he'd successfully reduced the boy to a quivering heap, he moved back down to the chest once more. For the first time since the car ride, he realized that he was actually hard as _fuck,_  and just straddling the boy's legs, dragging his crotch downwards brought him near to bursting. Sneering slightly at his oversight, he unzipped his fly - oh, _there_ was the fear now, holy hell, _yes_ \- swallowing the groan of anticipation as he undid the rope strapping down those magazine-smooth thighs. He adjusted the pillows a bit; it was kind of like having a very vocal puppet, with his twisted knees and sharp, shallow gasps every time Levi repositioned his broken body. The protesting only served to make him harder, faster. _Shit, don't come yet, you stupid fuck._

He stuffed a pillow under the small of the boy's back, peeled his dripping legs apart. So, _so_ much blood.

But still, not enough on his dick.

Levi used it as lube. He leaned in, gingerly, and began making neat little slices all the way down the boy's shaft, stopping at the slit to prod with his blade, bathed in childish curiosity. The skin pulled back, gave way, parted like a soft pair of lips; it elicited the loveliest high-pitched shrill, a futile heave of Babyface's hips that sent Levi's cock into a frenzy. He dug his nail in, twisted hard, _nnghed_ when the boy rutted against him and squealed like an after-birth abortion. He lathered his hands in their shared fluids - red from the kid's member, clear, slick arousal from his - and went in three whole fingers at once. He stabbed upwards, stabbed and scraped until he could practically feel the shit and blood congealing. It was actually a bit before Levi could get his dick still enough to fuck him - but, oh, the way he finally shoved into that glorious ass; the high-heaven, winding shriek - it was incredibly _worth_ it.

He alternated with the scalpel and his sex, though neither stilled for very long. Once he was deep enough in both respects, he began to peel away at the wounds, oh-so-gently, head jerking backwards whenever the heat took total command of his hips. His fingers gave way to deep, deep red, tendon-white and raw-meat pink; occasionally, Levi would lean forwards to press his hand into the cuts, to see how the blood would spurt and the boy would tremble. He was gurgling now, god bless him, trying his hardest to cry out through the sedation - poor thing should've just closed his mouth, because his tongue was shredding to ribbons. It was so fucking _darling,_ so dear, the involuntary arch of that spine, the shallow whimpers of pain because if he breathed too deeply Levi would just wrap his hands around his chest, delve into the widest gash and fondle his lungs until-

Well, _fuck._

Babyface thrust into the scalpel as it was hovering right over his heart. Before Levi knew what he was doing he'd already managed to twist upwards and around, using the strength of his shoulders to bury himself handle-deep in the blade.

He squirmed and squirmed, with just enough dying desperation in his eyes to make his actions clear. He was trying to kill himself before Levi climaxed - the little _shit_.

Levi refused to let the kid beat him to the punch. He leaned forwards on strong haunches, using every bit of muscle in his thighs to press the boy's _useless_ fucking hips upwards, shuddering as he grasped Babyface's neck between his fists. He sneered and snarled wordlessly, shivered and shook, watching the body twitch and life flow out of those gorgeous, long-lashed eyes.

"Eren," he gasped aloud, just as something snapped near the base of the boy's skull and he came hard, so fucking hard and beautifully and everywhere and heaved into paradise.

 

**agape I.  
**

It was only later, long after he'd disposed of the corpse, that Levi realized the boy died seconds before his orgasm.

That fact never really stopped haunting him.

He'd managed to answer his questions, though. Death wasn't peaceful. It was violent, terrifying, black as an ultimatum - and more spellbinding than anything on Earth.

He started watching the news. Babyface had gone missing, body and all. A day. A week. A month. The police found pieces of some green-eyed kid floating downriver in rural St. Maria, though they weren't yet sure whether or not this boy was the one.

Three months and two more victims later, he was flying from state to state, making angel-tracks and hellfire across the country. He left tire squeals in every big city, stole for the money and fucked for the drugs. He never found Eren, though - not that he'd ever really been looking for him in the first place.

Of course not.

So, when he wound up _not-looking_ for Eren back in their Golden State hometown, four years after the first murder, he wasn't the least bit thrilled when he ran into the mysterious, indomitable Mr. Smith. Who just so happened to claim knowledge of the exact residence and new, assumed identity of his once-brother.

There was an old warrant out for Levi's arrest; according to Erwin, he'd been charged with rape, four years after the actual assault. Once Eren's parents had gathered enough evidence to frame him, they went to court and prosecuted, dragging their incredibly unwilling teenager in tow. The story was all over the news for a day or two - but only just. Thanks to Eren's lack of input, his crime proved to be little more than a juicy tidbit for journalists, another media-shocker for the local population. The officials couldn't really do shit about it. They barely even tried. By then, he'd been long gone, and his victim wouldn't admit to anything else besides the most obvious fact.

Erwin hadn't been a private investigator. His knowledge came from personal ventures. He had been searching for Levi, too - with far more drive and self-possession than that of the police. He had his own reasons for it, reasons which he didn't divulge until much later down the road. Maybe if law enforcement had pursued him as diligently as Erwin did, then they would've actually snagged him before he strode, open-armed, through their office doors years later like Jesus the fucking Christ.

Over six feet of sex, blonde hair and immaculate professionalism, and he'd devoted his life to chasing down a murderer-rapist. It was the wildest thing Levi had ever refused to believe, until he was forced to believe it - because Erwin liked boys, too. That was the first thing Levi learned about him. He liked them so much that once he'd taken them home and fucked them gently, he couldn't help but want to keep them forever. So he did.

In formaldehyde.

His whole come-on was kind of sudden, and startling, to say the least. The man had gone screaming past him in a police car, chased him down and handcuffed him to the backseat, and it wasn't until Levi was kicking and biting that he apologized - oh, _sorry,_ _I'm actually just a humble carjacker who's been trying to flag down your criminal ass for years, also quite possibly a pedophile, and a skilled surgeon, and did I mention that my suit is Armani?_

Their dialogue went something like that, punctuated perhaps with a _few_ more of Levi's worst swears and a couple of near-crashes as they screeched down the starlit highways of LA. It would've been kind of romantic if they weren't both screaming bloody murder and trying to out-maneuver a slew of actual police cars speeding behind them.

Erwin essentially blackmailed him into joining forces. Somehow, in his perfect, flawless way, he'd traced the Green-Eyed Murders back to Levi (fucking original name), with the police having yet to possess an inkling of his identity. It was fantastic. Levi pestered him for months, begging for an answer as much as his dignity would allow. Erwin threatened to kill Eren if Levi kept bothering him about it.

So, for a while, he did.

Still, though, he and Erwin fought and fought. It was a miserable contract they'd created; neither was submissive enough to bow to the others' whims in a necessary way. Erwin had issues with Levi's memories, or lack thereof - whenever the man tried to interrogate him, the questions usually devolved into shouting matches of pointless exasperation and anger. And, also, Levi found out quick - Erwin was fucking _religious_ , of all things. A religious madman _,_ sometimes, when Levi railed against him and claimed all that shit was a lie. It made Erwin mad enough to hurt him. Levi tried to hurt him back. They bruised each other a lot, though the death threats never quite came to fruition.

Levi hated what Erwin believed, and Erwin hated Levi's disgust. Their sadistic preferences rarely collided, thank god, because if that had been the case then they really might've ended up killing each other in a fit of rage. Levi went for the eyes, while Erwin went for the youth. They helped each other, though, when they weren't fucking things and shouting and breaking car windows. Erwin taught Levi how to prolong his victim's lives, extend their virility for weeks and weeks, begin the preservation process while they were still conscious and breathing. He taught Levi how _not_ to cut through skin, and that if you did so-and-so with your scalpel while pulling their flesh taut and depressing their homeostasis you could keep them mostly-aware while you stuck your tongue and hands and dick in places that even Satan would've reviled. You could stitch up the gaps and reopen them, come in their wounds and then sow them up again. You could give this pill for that, or that pill for this. Pickle their head in a jar if they were particularly beautiful.

All the things he knew were amazing.

All the secrets he kept were kind of terrifying.

The worst part was how he liked to dangled Eren in Levi's face; all the time, every day. The jibes were subtle, subtle enough to be suave - but still, fiercely pointed and full of venom.  _Do you miss him, Levi? Oh, Eren, I mean. He's doing well, you know._

It baffled Levi, why Erwin did what he did. After a while, though, through the shroud of mystery and intrigue - Levi began to notice the poison in Erwin's veins, infecting his every thought, his every breath. He began to see his mind for what it really was: one sick, festering subarachnoid hemorrhage; a bottomless black hole. Something had punctured the very core of his being. Something there had ruptured, long ago.

But what, he couldn't say.

Five more years. Erwin's house became their headquarters. There was a makeshift operating table in the basement, where they stockpiled all their tools. There were a lot more drugs available at their disposal. Things were exquisite. They were hurtling forwards.

Hurtling straight towards the climax.

 

  **agape** **II.**

Erwin hadn't been lying. He did, in fact, know Eren.

He was the kid's fucking _psychiatrist._

Levi hadn't been sure whether to laugh or cry when he heard the news. Poor fucking sweetheart had survived de Sade for a brother, only to gain Hannibal Lecter as a mentor. Hell was, quite obviously, a place on earth.

According to Erwin, though, he went by Hunter these days. He was majoring in architecture at SMU, along with some kid he'd met named Armin. Apparently, they were interested in each other, though their relationship was slightly complicated by Eren's past.

 _Well,_ _good. Fucking great,_ Levi had sneered. _Sounds like he needs a reminder._

Erwin had just sighed his usual sigh of exasperation, pinched the bridge of his nose between two long fingers. _Do you want to see him?_

_Fuck you._

A devil's smile. _I'll take that as a yes._

Levi didn't believe him at first. It was a game he'd long since grown used to playing. He no longer rose to Erwin's petty bait.

_Promise me one thing, though._

Those words had made him pause. No, not just the words - Erwin's tone of _voice._ He'd never heard him sound like that before.

_What?_

_If I bring him back to you..._ his back had been turned, then, Levi can clearly recall. He would've given the world to see the expression on Erwin's face in that moment. _You'll do what you want with him, do whatever you need to get over him. Then, you'll let him go._  

_Let him go?_

Erwin made a strange, snarling noise. _You know what I mean. Forget about him. Forever._

Oh.

Well, of course, that was an ridiculously impossible request. Levi wouldn't give up a single memory of Eren if it meant eternal damnation.

But, he was a very good liar.

 _Whatever,_ he'd mumbled. _Just let me see him again._

 

**eros III.**

He fell apart the moment his gaze met green.

Erwin had to help him over to the operating table, because his legs were refusing to work. There were tears in his eyes, but he wasn't crying. He was too shell-shocked to weep.

"Eren," he whispered, tentatively brushing a fingertip across his freckled cheek. Just to make sure he was real.

_Freckles._

Had those been there before?

Then, he realized that - oh, _shit_ _,_ Eren was screaming, flailing, kicking against the restraints, wailing like a siren. Levi snapped back to reality; sounds flew into focus, his gaze registered that bared-tooth snarl and his knees straightened just in time for Eren's palm to collide with his skin, backhanding his outstretched arm, causing him to stumble with the force.

"Get _away_ from me! Get away! _Fuck_ you, _fuck you fuck you fuck you fu-_ "

 _"Hunter!"_ Erwin shouted, and his anger shook the house to its foundations. "I _told_ you, if you were loud _-_ "

"You didn't _drug_ him?" Levi yelled above the cacophony. Eren was still arching his back, seizuring like that girl in the Exorcist, swearing and howling nonsensically. He dodged another incoming slap, jerked his fingers away from Eren's snapping jaws. The bed thumped up and down on the floor with the sheer strength of his arms.

 _"_ Of _course_ not! Not without your permission!" Erwin was rummaging through the cabinets, hands flying from glass door to needle.

"Well, fucking do it now!"

He grabbed something packed with liquid out of the cabinet labeled HYPODERMICS, raced over to the table with hands still ungloved. "Help me hold him down!"

Levi squeezed the boy's temples between his hands as Erwin struggled to tie a gag around Eren's mouth. He nearly lost a hand, but he managed to stuff the cloth so far down Eren's throat that he was rendered voiceless and gargling. His limbs were still thrashing, though, so Levi gripped his forearms and pressed them downwards, turning the skin around his fingertips white while Erwin stabbed the needle into his wrist, searching frantically for a vein.

There were purple-brown bruises on Eren's biceps when he let go. But, they'd finally managed to subdue him, and his breathing was lucid and light. His eyes were still open, but barely. He was awake.

Erwin watched from the shadows while Levi kissed him, felt him, loved him, tasted him from head to toe. Kid was so far gone that he kept making these sporadic little moans of pleasure, and a few times it almost got to be too much. He had to step away once or twice to calm his breath, to devour Eren with his eyes while he waited for the throbbing to subside.

After what felt like forever, he finally released that soft, brown baby-flesh from his teeth, leaving a mosaic of bruises and honeysuckle marks in his stead. Erwin was still standing there in the corner, in the same place he'd been the whole time, and he turned to face Levi, slowly, swiveling on his heel. "What do you want to do next?"

"Inside him," he breathed, still slightly hard-pressed for air. "I want _inside_."

Erwin frowned in confusion. "Inside?"

"His _body_ ," Levi sneered. "Organs. Muscles. The whole nine yards."

"Oh," Erwin said, after a few moments of introspective silence. "I think I can do that."

"And - if there's anything he doesn't need, then - can I have that, too?"

Erwin looked at him for a very, very long time. He contemplated, crossed his arms, and finally - let out a soft sigh of resignation.

"Have you ever heard of a laparoscopy?"

 

**storge I.**

He huddled outside of the dim wash of light, letting Erwin work his magic. He could smell the burning tissue from where he sat - Erwin gave him periodic updates on his progress, briefly explaining each weird, shiny thing he stuck inside Eren's gas-inflated abdominal cavity. Right now, it was the cautery, and he was searing away some sort of useless nerve membrane in order to successfully (or semi-successfully) detach the kid's appendix.

It was really amazing, all the stuff he could afford. Apparently, a decent endoscope cost about two hundred bucks online. Hell knows how he kept supplied with the drugs.

The tears never stopped coming, even after Eren had closed his eyes to avoid seeing. That was amazing, too. A couple times, Levi had requested to remove the boy's gag, but Erwin deflected him with a brusque shake of his head. _Not a good idea, Levi, and you know it._

At one point, he began to muse aloud. "I wonder what Mikasa would do if she knew about this shit."

Erwin had actually paused then, looked up and shot him a strange glance. "Who's Mikasa?"

 

**agape III.**

_He's on top of me.  
_

_He's in me._

She tried to move, tried to feel. He had her pinned down, balls-deep in her ass, sinking his nails into her chest and yet she couldn't think a single thing but _Eren. Eren. Eren._

As long as he was safe, unharmed, it didn't matter what happened to her. She could die right here, happily, knowing she'd done her job. Even if she asphyxiated with his cock down her throat, even if he tore her thighs in two, even if he ripped her limbs apart and fucked her until she was white and stiff and bloodless - it didn't matter.

Nothing mattered anymore.

"Give him back," Erwin was whispering, hissing, crying. "Give him back to me."

Every now and then, a tear would cascade down his cheek and drop onto her back, slip between her shoulderblades and evaporate into her skin. She counted each one, dully, each little drip, to drown out the pain.

_Five._

_Ten._

_Fifteen._

_Twenty._

"Levi," Erwin gasped, slammed her face into the ground. Her eyes knocked together in their sockets. "Levi, Levi, _Levi_ -"

 _I'm not Levi,_ she tried to say, but her tongue was lead in her throat. She tried to spit out the broken shards of teeth, shredded gums and bone, but her lips wouldn't move - the words fell to pieces in the pit of her stomach _._ _Hurts,_ she wanted to tell him. _You're hurting me._

 _"Huhhh,"_ she managed. The effort was agonizing. Something spurted out of her nose, dribbled down her face; maybe blood, but that was all she could taste anyways. She couldn't smell. She couldn't see. It was all dark, kind of like a womb. All warm and wet and sticky.

"Shut up," he groaned. Moaned, sobbed. He sounded so very far away. "Shut up..."

_I love you, Mikasa._

His hands were so warm.

_I love you, so much._

His arms wrapped around her, filling her soul with light.

_Save... save..._

"Fuck!"

Something tore inside her.

_Save... me..._

_"Levi!"_

His sadness was breaking her heart. She wanted to take his hands, to tell him that everything would be all right. She opened her mouth to scream, to scream for him, but she swallowed gravel instead.

"I'm gonna - I'm gonna-"

_Green eyes._

She reached out to hold him. He was standing right there, right there, right before her, calling her name from the void.

And she stepped forwards.

 

**agape IV.  
**

The papers were wrong.

There hadn't been thirty-eight people. Thirty-eight deaths, all right, but there was one survivor. That made thirty-nine members of the Heaven's Gate Away Team, in total.

His name was Erwin.

He was turning sixteen that year. There was no way he was going to miss the biggest birthday party of his life, just because his parents had forced him to join their crazy cult suicide pact.

No fucking _way._

He took the barbiturates and vodka, just like everyone else. They would've killed him on the spot if he hadn't. Then, while they were all "fellowshipping," he snuck into the bathrooms, turned on the vent to cover the sound, and stuck his fingers down his throat.

He kept doing it, over and over. Every free second he had was spent vomiting up poison. Then, the very moment that heads turned, eyes closed, and bags went over necks - he fled.

It had been a life-changing experience, and not in a good way. For a long time afterwards, he didn't speak. After they pumped his stomach, gave him the charcoal and sent him on his way, there was nothing left for him to say. He just couldn't open his mouth. Even if he could - what was the point? There was no way to articulate the hell in his mind. There was nothing but darkness; darkness and hurt and death.

Not, at least, until he _found the light._

Whenever people raised their eyebrows in his direction, he'd give them an earnest smile and say, simply, that God had saved his life. There was a reason that he was the only person who managed to escape that fateful day. It was all a part of a greater plan, heaven's hands guiding him towards the truth. Honestly, the more he tried to disprove the words of the church, the more he found that they were _right._ And so one day they dressed him in an old white t-shirt, dipped him in warm water, and proclaimed him "born again." He went to the sermons and sang. He let himself be filled with the Holy Spirit. He listened to the preacher, his mentors, his guidance counselor. He went to college, hoping to someday help other kids just like him, ones who were living in mental hurricanes, ones who'd convinced themselves that there was no way out but out.

He'd help them find the eye of the storm.

He was still in medical school when he came across the newspaper that turned his life upside-down and his made his heart one-eighty in the wrong direction. He was still going through the healing process, facing his greatest fears and delving into the dark world of cults and mass murderers and persuasion. He was hell-bent on discovering the secrets behind Heaven's Gate, the reason its leaders had managed to ensnare so many helpless, lost souls in deception.

_Oh, but what a tangled web we weave._

It was some obscure clipping dating back to '98 where first came across Levi Ackerman's name. He'd been a young survivor, too, though not in the exact same way as Erwin. The more research he did, the more he uncovered. He did some calling, hired some people. It sent him into even more debt, as a broke, twenty-something prospective psychiatrist, but at the time it hardly mattered. He was obsessed before he even realized it was an obsession.

He became fixated with everything to do with that boy, that sullen, black-and-white paper face. He'd been nine years old when his innocence had been stolen from him, snatched away by hands who were no longer alive to suffer for their deeds.

_Nine years old._

He was slipping hard, by then, but somehow he managed to graduate and score an internship. Maybe it was God's way of telling him that he hadn't given up on Erwin, yet. God loved everyone, even the child molesters and the sodomizers and murderers and thieves of innocence. Erwin was all four.

He picked up a few things along the way, despite his specialty having nothing to do with surgery. Most of it, though, he just figured out on his own. Being a doctor can get you things, acquaintances, money that normal people only wished they had. Being good at the internet and knowing how to hide your cyber-tracks from the FBI doesn't hurt, either.

Then, the murders began.

He knew Levi had been in the foster care system for a long time. He also that knew Levi had lived with the Jaegers for two years. He'd gone missing at seventeen, though nobody seemed to know why. _Yes, he had issues. Yes, he was a lonely kid. What did you expect? A lot of them run away at that age. Stop wasting my time._

That front-liner had been a sign from heaven. He'd had his suspicions up until that point, with the wealth of information he'd gathered over the past decade, but there was no way of being completely sure until - fucking, goddamn _bam!_ All over the place, like an overnight phenomenon: "Victim of Violent Assault to Finally Receive Justice?" and "Five Years of Silence: One Boy's Tale of Trauma."

It was a miracle. He almost cried when he first heard Levi's name on TV. Some pretty little news anchor, turning her nose up in disgust and sketching around the dirty r-word, holding up a picture of a beautiful green-eyed boy. _Can you imagine the level of depravity, the extent of evil required to-_

He'd shut it off then. His job was done.

The only thing left was to seize Eren and strike.

 

**agape V. _(final)_  
**

Last night, he came to me in the cell. It was only for a few minutes, and he was the last visitor I would ever have.

To say I was absolutely horrified would be the understatement of the decade. Perhaps even the century. Because he was _dead._ I'd _killed_ him. 

I'd killed him ten years ago.

Well, Erwin had killed him, really, but the little details weren't important. What mattered was that we botched something along the way, and instead of bothering to salvage him, Erwin had tossed him in a garbage disposal to die. I stood there and watched, paralyzed from the ground up.

To this day, I still ask myself why I couldn't fucking move.

But, I'd watched it, witnessed it with my own eyes - tied with rope and sutured from top to bottom in FiberWire, barely even breathing; surely the force of Erwin's toss would've caused some of his stitches to break if he wasn't already dying-

His was the only body they never found.

(Excluding Erwin's, but he'd just set himself on fire.)

_Fuck._

I could only stand there and tremble as he reached his hand through my cell bars, and like a doubting Thomas I stared, frantically scanned him for scars. Being the little angel he always was, he offered to lift up his shirt for me and show me the marks from when Erwin had taken out his kidney and appendix, slit him open for my pleasure.

They were _there._

Thick and flat and nearly skin-colored, but still there.

"You... why did you save my life?" he murmured, like it was the most normal question in the world. Like it was what you'd ask any old guy right before his death was going to be broadcast on national television the next morning.

Honestly, I didn't have a single fucking notion of what his ghost mouth was yammering about.

"I killed you," I hissed, running my hand down the skin of his arm, swallowing the burn in my chest. I'll admit, some part of me didn't give two shits whether or not he'd turned into some sort of zombie. Or even a demon, come straight from hell to torment me for my unforgivable sins.

As long as he was at least partially _alive._

"It was Mikasa, then," he said, half to himself, with a soft, secretive little smile. "She saved me."

I was even more lost than before. I stared at him. I gaped. Felt the flutter. Confusion, fear.

Then, he did the absolutely unthinkable - he put a hand to my cheek, _caressed_ it. Not a hint of hatred on his face.

His touch was warm.

"Tell Mikasa that I love her," he whispered, and I swear there were real, honest-to-god tears in his eyes when he spoke. Then he whirled on his heel and strode back down the hallway, without so much as a retrospective glance. Disappeared into the dark. Vanished like he'd never even been here in the first place.

I watched him go. I hardly understood a word of what he'd just said, but it still hurt like hell. If there had ever been a single day of my life when I doubted my love for him, a single fucking _moment,_ a millimeter of my second-guessing buried somewhere within the vast folds of the space-time continuum, of the universe, beyond the universe, beyond the boundaries of human existence and God and-

_Well, doubt no more, Levi.  
_

 

-

 

"Any last words?"

_Panic._

Don't panic.

_It's all for him._

"Can they hear me?" I ask, trying to keep my voice steady and the terror small in my chest. The strong, sterile smell isn't helping anything, though, and my nose is clogged with useless air.

I can't let him see that I'm scared, because I know he is, too.

I know what he's afraid of.

"Yes," a man says. "They can."

I look through the glass. Scan the small collection of reporters, families, beating hearts that are a million times less important than his. Find his form. He's sitting between his parents, whose faces are like cold stone.

But he's far from impassive. I can see the question burning in his gaze; green, green anticipation. Fists clenched, like he used to do as a child. A scar on his cheek that wasn't always there.

_Who are you?_

The world lapses into silence. The doctors wait. The TV waits. Judgement waits. 

God is waiting.

"It's me," I say, loud and clear.

I mouth the word.

_Sister._

And I watch his eyes go wide.


End file.
